Tuesday, April 25, 2017

We’re well into veraison here at Climate Change Cellars, so it must be Spring! And that means new releases, just in time for mosquito season. There’s something about those cute little disease-ridden bloodsuckers that makes me think of wine bloggers visiting Climate Change Cellars and asking for free samples. Yet another sign of Spring! I’m old enough to remember songbirds, and how their music used to fill the Spring air. Remember them? Sure you do, they were just like pigeons and crows, which are all that’s left now, but tinier, and they ate a lot of insects. Luckily, because Mother Nature is resourceful, now we have the beautiful buzz of mosquitoes to let us know it’s time for the release of our newest vintages of Climate Change Cellars’ Zika Red, and Zika White. It’s Spring, and time for a case of Zika!

I think you’ll really like our new vintage of Zika White. It’s a very versatile wine, made to accompany both food and famine! Let’s face it, not everyone has enough food these days, yet you still might like a nice glass of something affordable to accompany your empty dinner table. Our Climate Change Cellars Zika White is perfect! I’ve been drinking it on a regular basis, and I find I like it better on an empty stomach. In the old days, the common wisdom was that fine wines were meant to accompany a meal. But regular meals just aren’t possible for a lot of people in our new world, so at Climate Change Cellars we decided to make a fine wine that goes great with starvation diets. The 2125 Zika White is 100% Malnutria Bianca, and would also be great with seafood. Were there any.

The 2124 Zika Red might be my favorite vintage ever. 2124 was a classic Climate Change year. Winter rains were virtually non-existent here on the Arctic tundra, but melting glaciers provided more than enough water. (As an aside, I felt blessed that winter to witness the annual migration of the reindeer—his name is Sven.) We had bud break right around Valentine’s Day, a lovely Spring marred only by the usual plague of locusts, though, thank God, they mostly only ate the wheat crop, and a leisurely harvest around the end of July. So, in a word, perfect! The Zika Red is a blend of Petite Sirah and Tannat—a great match for your scavenged meal of tree bark. Buy it by the case, and we’ll throw in an exclusive Climate Change Denier’s T-Shirt—like their arguments, it's full of holes!

Before I talk about our highly allocated wines, I want to talk a bit about our sustainable, Earth-friendly, natural farming practices here at Climate Change Cellars. First of all, it would be impossible to grow grapes in these dramatic environmental conditions were it not for the array of herbicides and pesticides we rely on to keep our plants alive. But we’re very proud that here at Climate Change Cellars, all of that herbicide and pesticide residue runs off into our local streams and rivers, which are, of course, completely devoid of life. Our ancestors made sure of that, and we honor them for their legacy of truly clean, lifeless water into which we can dump our chemicals. We do no harm to any living thing by emptying our chemicals into the river. Just ask my son Johnny, who loves swimming in the river—though it’s a big advantage that he was born with flippers instead of arms, and a blowhole on top of his head (called a “Bill O’Reilly,” though why is something of a mystery).

Our vineyards are Certified Biohaznamic®. We follow the Biohaznamic Calendar, which tells us what days are best for planting, harvesting, and even tasting. Our winemaker only tastes on extinction days, when every taste might be your last, so the wines taste especially good. And if the Brix are just right, we only pick on greenhouse gas days, so that our mechanical harvesters work to their greatest potential. There was a time when we used migratory workers to harvest the grapes, but they were mostly rapists and murderers. And we don’t need rapists and murderers, we have world leaders for that.

Climate Change Cellars has also been a leader in finding replacements for French oak barrels. Now that the oak forests of the world are being devastated by beetles, we’ve taken to aging our best wines in barrels made from yucca. We prefer neutral barrels so that our wines don’t taste too yucky. No one wants an overyucked Chardonnay.

Being Certified Biohaznamic®, we never add sulfites to our wines. We treat our wines as living expressions of the earth, living beings that need to be protected, not altered. So we don’t add sulfites, or any of the other 320 chemicals currently allowed to be added to wine. Though, in the spirit of protection, we do spray sunblock on the grapes. SPF 35. Kinda smells like coconut. In a good way.

We also have a couple of special wines to offer with this newsletter. Quantities are tiny, so it’s first come, first served—just like natural resources!

2123 Fossil Fuel Reserve
There wouldn’t be a Climate Change Cellars but for fossil fuels! We honor them with our best red wine. Each vintage sports a different label, and the 2123 is a lovely rendition of a classic Ford F-150, the bestselling truck at a time when burning fossil fuel was a lively First World tradition. What a honey! And with the F-150's size and height, why you could see everything in front of you but, apparently, the obvious effects of greenhouse gases. We think it’s a sweet tribute, and worthy of the great 2123 Fossil Fuel Reserve. This great red wine should last 25 years—drink it when the last elephant dies! Hey, the F-150’s didn’t have any trunks either.

2122 Way Too Late Harvest Red
Made in small quantities, our Way Too Late Harvest Red is our Desertification wine. Made from grapes carefully dried on straw mats just out of the reach of hungry locals, the wine is fermented until just the right sweetness, and then fortified, like our Southern borders. We think you’ll love it. At Climate Change Cellars, we strive to leave you with one final bittersweet taste in your mouth.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

So it was the first guy I killed that gave me the taste for it. You know how you were a young wannabe somm once, and you’d tell your wine-ignorant friends that you hated Chardonnay, but then your mentor tasted you on a Raveneau Premier Cru Chablis and from then on you couldn’t ever get enough Chablis? My first taste of blood was like that. I mean, back then I was kinda squeamish. My palate was pretty primitive. Now, well, now I can blind taste and tell the difference between type O and type AB. O has more garrigue in the mid-palate. AB smells like Côte-Rôtie. Oh, man, I love a good saignée.

I don’t remember that first guy’s name, but I remember why I killed him.

Goddamit, I’m a Master Sommelier, one of the few women who’s achieved that goal. You’d think I’d get some respect. You’d think that pin on my lapel would convey the same authority for me as it does for a guy. If a guy has one, he wears it around on his suit and people think it’s the fucking Congressional Medal of Honor. That’s pathetic. Knowing a lot about wine isn’t particularly admirable. The people who make the wines don’t wear any pins. Wearing a Master Sommelier pin is like declaring yourself a Nobel Laureate because you know the words to every Bob Dylan song. Who the fuck cares? But I wear my pin and people think I got it on my prom date. They think I found it in a Thrift Store and thought it was cute. Have you seen the MS lapel pin? It’s ugly! It looks like Michael Jackson going to a toga party, fer Christ’s sake. I deserve the same respect as a dude who’s a Master Sommelier, don’t I? Maybe more. None of those dudes had to put up with being hit on by their mentors.

So I’m working the floor one night and this guy wants to speak to the sommelier. I go over to his table, he’s there with a bunch of other guys, and he looks at me and says, “Is the head sommelier here?” Well, to be more accurate, he looks at my tits and says, “Is the head sommelier here?” I tell him I am the head sommelier. “Oh, good”, he says, “I could use some head.” Then he runs his eyes over me like he’s judging for the 4H club and says, “I’m looking for something to go with my meat.” His buddies start to chuckle. “Looking at you,” I tell him, “I’m guessing it’s not the bone-in cut. Must the the old hanger steak.” He just smiles and orders the Silver Oak. Death was too good for him. I mean, Silver Oak? Really? Why don’t you just wear a hat that says, “When Only Mediocre Will Do.”

I made sure to get him nice and drunk. I bought him several glasses of Port as an apology. Then I ambushed him in the parking lot and cut his throat with a box cutter. Wow, I remember thinking, Raveneau Chablis all over again! I need some in my cellar. So that’s where I put him.

You always remember your first. How many since that asshat? I don’t really know. It’s like when you’re a sommelier, people always ask you how many bottles you have in your cellar. You’re never sure. A lot. That’s all you know. You can’t remember the names of all of them, but you know there are a lot. But you do have your favorites.

I love the guys who slip me their phone number when their wife goes to the bathroom. Like I’m supposed to be flattered. You want me to be flattered? Leave me a tip as big as you leave the guy somms, jackass. It does make it easy though. I call them up, arrange to meet them somewhere dark and intimate, and then I kill them. For laughs, I make them share a bottle of orange wine with me before I poison them. I find I like poison more and more. And the orange wine makes the poison undetectable. They’re virtually indistinguishable when you drink them. Hell, some of them don’t even need the poison to paralyze you from the neck down. But, in fact, a bit of anti-freeze nicely fills out the middle of a skin contact Pinot Gris. I’m told, anyway. Adds a tiny bit of stone fruit to the finish. Prestone fruit.

The misogyny in the wine business is terrible, and it’s everywhere, and no one seems to care. Yeah, I know, there’s misogyny in every damn business. But wine claims to be so civilized, so emblematic of sophistication and learning. And then, like our President, it grabs your pussy and shouts, “It’s gonna be YUGE!” And nobody says anything about it. I guess I just decided to make being a pig a little bit more dangerous. Maybe you’ll remember me the next time you meet a woman in the wine business, maybe you’ll think twice about harassing her. You’d better.

I really thought I’d quit after a couple. But I’m an overachiever. Duh. I’m a Master Sommelier. Come on. Being a woman AND a Master Sommelier? That’s the equivalent of being Jewish AND a Breitbart contributor. Killing, it turns out, comes easily to me. Though, really, I don’t have the time to kill all of the idiots I meet. There are so many! It’s like being a Peregrine falcon in New York City. Jesus, how many stinking pigeons are there in the world? Same in the wine business. Only in the wine business, nobody notices how they’re crapping on everybody.

If I somehow managed to kill every guy in the wine business who mistreats, belittles, infantilizes, insults, gropes, condescends to, mocks, patronizes, overlooks, propositions, embarrasses or underpays women, there’d be more empty suits than an executive meeting at Treasury Wine Estates. So I’ve got my work cut out for me. In more ways than one.

I don’t mean to say that killing misogynists is right. No. It’s not right. It’s fun! I’m sure I’ll get caught eventually. Just hope it’s not in the middle of my shift. Fuck, the chef I work for is a real stickler for being arrested on the floor. “Do it on your day off,” that’s what he’d say. I’d have killed him by now, but, well, he was on “Top Chef.” I love that show.

Monday, April 10, 2017

The first thing that happens when you’re thirty years old, you write a landmark book about wine that lands on “The New York Times” bestseller list just below Bill O’Reilly (and what’s creepier than being thirty, gorgeous and trapped under Bill O’Reilly?), and you tell people you’re going to walk away from your book tour and the unprecedented adulation, the near universal praise for your precocious genius, to become a professional wine critic is that your phone begins to ring.

Phones don’t really ring now, do they? Not like they did in our parents’ homes. Let’s say a person, or a machine, (I met many who review wines who are both, but I’ll get to that) dials your smartphone. Whereas once all telephones sounded virtually identical, now each person has a ring tone that, in some personal way, speaks to the smartphone owner’s view of herself. Recent studies done at places of higher learning have shown that you can discern a great deal about a person’s self-image by the ring tone of their phone. I’m pretty sure you didn’t know that. It’s the kind of insight you’re going to have to expect as I tell you about how I became an important wine critic. Have I mentioned yet that I’m a journalist? And a fine one, at that. I worked for the “Huffington Post,” which is to “The New York Times” what roadkill is to the Westminster National Dog Show. Barely recognizable as the same thing.

My phone never stopped playing, “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.” I’m not sure what that says about me. Except I should stop giving out my phone number. The people telling me I was nuts to want to be a wine critic were the same ones who told me I was crazy to try to become a sommelier. Idiots. I had to become a sommelier. I had a book proposal, and the blurbs for the book had already been written. I had to write the book to go with them.

Now that I was a recognized wine expert after twelve months of study, the equivalent, I was told, of learning fluent Klingon in two weeks, only less useful, I had noticed when I was shopping at my favorite local wine merchant that many wines had been assigned numbers by men and women known as wine critics. I became fascinated by them. I wanted to become a wine critic for a prestigious wine publication, though I couldn’t think of any. I knew that wine critics didn’t have any prestige. Sommeliers have prestige; wine critics have gum disease. It’s their own specific type of gum disease—gingivitis vinifera.

I carpet-bombed all the wine critics I could find with emails, much like one does when your house is infested with fleas and ticks. The sommeliers I’d met, and easily surpassed, had often referred to wine critics as a form of pest, most closely related to leeches. “You don’t really think,” one told me, “that the name ‘Suckling’ is coincidental, do you?” Pests or not, wineries had to cater to the most powerful wine critics, and I liked the idea of that. I gave myself a month to become a regular wine critic for a national publication. I didn’t need to be the critic for Bordeaux, or Brunello di Montalcino, or Champagne, I was willing to settle for being the lead critic for a far lesser region, maybe Australia. You always get Australia when you’re a new wine critic, I discovered, the best critics avoid it and leave it to the newcomers. It’s essentially hazing. I was willing to endure Australian wines for a while, then I’d walk away from the job (it’s what journalists do—did I mention I’m a journalist by trade?) with a witty, “You’re not the Barossa me.”

Almost every important wine critic (an oxymoron, according to Tim Hanni MW, who calls me way too often) ignored my letters. While I waited for a break, I studied wine criticism. I knew how to write wine descriptions, I’m a journalist after all. (I’ve been published in the online “New Yorker.” Which is just like the print “New Yorker,” only desperate for content.) I felt pretty comfortable using the 100 Point Scale. It’s not that hard to assign numbers to wine. And it turns out that humans are not the only animals who assign numbers. Scientists in Italy (I didn’t know Italy had any scientists, that surprised me) demonstrated in a series of carefully designed experiments that dogs assign numbers to trees. Usually number one, and occasionally number two. So, apparently, assigning numbers is a part of natural brain function. I might write a chapter about that. I want to get my brain scanned again. I think I might need a bigger head. If that were possible.

One evening my husband and I were practicing with my 100 Point Scale flash cards (I have a mental block on 89) when I heard “Anything You Can Do” coming from the bedroom. A voice on the other end said, “Hello, Bianca? This is Tim Fish with ‘Wine Spectator.’ I got your email. I’d be happy to show you what it’s like to be a wine critic.”

I had set my sights pretty high. I wanted to learn to be a wine critic from Robert Parker, the man who had imposed the 100 Point Scale on wine. With that master stroke, Parker had done for wine what Garanimals had done for fashion—made it accessible for the clueless. “You don’t need to know shit about wine to use the 100 Point Scale,” Jay McInerney had told me while staring at my cleavage, “you just put a stupid tag on it and people buy it.” Sort of like one of his novels at the remainder table at Barnes and Noble.

Robert Parker never responded to any of my emails. This made no sense to me. He employs a lot of amateurs as critics, and I was willing to do it for free. I was on the verge of giving up when I heard a fateful version of “Anything You Can Do.” I answered the phone and a rather sultry, smoky voice said, “Hello, Bianca? This is Jancis Robinson. I think you and I should chat.”

A month later, I was reviewing wines for her site. She’ll hire anybody!

Cover Blurbs for Scork Dork:

“I loved this book. It’s the last one I’ll ever read.”—David Foster Wallace

“The Cat in the Hat of wine.”—Madeline Puckette

“Written in English, and plenty of it.”—Walter Isaacson

“The best book about wine since Cork Dork, Scork Dork is Bosker’s Bright Lights, Big City but without the drugs and rave reviews. Bosker is the voice of her generation, so sort of high and squeaky.”—Jay McInerney

Friday, April 7, 2017

There’s something interesting about writing satire. It’s a way to express a part of yourself that much of the time you suppress—the part that is cynical, that despises the human tendency to prevaricate, our tendency to give in to pride and self-righteousness. I try to make fun of anyone and everyone, and make people laugh along the way. When I’m successful, I am, curiously, both widely admired, and widely despised. I guess it’s in my nature to like that.

In February of 2016, I attended the Napa Valley Wine Writers’ Symposium. For the farewell dinner, which has much in common with the last meal given to death row inmates, I was seated between Virginie Boone and Lana Bortolot. I’d never met either woman. Virginie is, of course, one of the lead reviewers for Wine Enthusiast. She’s a very self-possessed and fascinating woman, with a very difficult job. Assigning numbers to wines. You not only have to know wines, you have to know numbers! So, there you go. I adored Virginie.

Lana Bortolot was attending the Symposium as a freelance writer. I fell in love with her that night. We went from nervous tablemates to sharing a lot of personal stories in about twenty minutes. I may have proposed to her. Several months later, she informed me that she had taken a job as Senior Editor for Wine Enthusiast. Lana is, in a word, brilliant. Wine Enthusiast is lucky to have her onboard. She will make everyone at the magazine better.

In August I won a Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Award for my column on Tim Atkin’s amazing wine site. If you’ve never heard of the Roederer Awards, they’re the wine equivalent of the MacArthur Genius Grants, if you ignore all three of those words. (Lana cut that joke from my Wine Enthusiast piece, for which I might have divorced her if I didn’t love her so much.)

Lana proposed to Wine Enthusiast that it would be interesting to hear from me about what it’s like for a guy who spends his life insulting everyone in the wine biz to win an award from those folks. Originally, Lana told me, she was going to have Virginie interview me. But then Virginie would get paid for the piece, not the HoseMaster. Thoughtfully, Lana commissioned me to write a brief piece for the back of the magazine. I noted in a previous post that I’d been published in the March 2017 issue of Wine Enthusiast, but they have only now published the piece online.

For those of you who didn’t read the piece in the magazine, here’s the link:

Frankly, everyone talks about how the wine business needs more satire, but no one publishes any. The only one writing comedy is Matt Kramer, he just doesn’t know it yet. Tim Atkin MW has published my crap for more than four years now, without ever changing a raucous, tasteless, profane word. That has taken courage. I owe him an enormous debt. Obviously, I can’t be that outrageous or tasteless in Wine Enthusiast. But it’s important to be acknowledged. I don’t care about the fame or the money (there isn’t much), but I care about the often under-appreciated art of satire. Being granted space in a mainstream and important wine publication matters to me.

Thank you, Lana. I love you. Thank you Wine Enthusiast for the exposure. And thank you to everyone who reads HoseMaster of Wine™. I don’t do this for you, I do it for my personal demons, but I very much appreciate that you support me.

Monday, April 3, 2017

This is my first time speaking at a Crapaholics Anonymous meeting, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the wines I drink lately. I drink wines I like. I think I know a lot about wine. I drink wines from all over the world. I drink wines from California, France, Washington, New Zealand, South Africa…I love South African wines! Have you had Pinotage? Do you know where the name comes from? It’s Pinot Noir crossed with a little Garbage. I think it’s required by law to be at least 15% Garbage. Anyway, I love wine. I buy wines based on experience, and the reviews of reliable critics. So, mostly experience. I thought wine was just wine. There’s bad wine, good wine, great wine, and really great wine. But it turns out I was wrong. I was fooling myself, probably like all of you Crapaholics here tonight. It’s a hard thing for me to say. But I need help with my addiction to Crap. I’m a Crap whore.

I'm taking a big risk here. Normally, what's talked about at a Crapaholics Anonymous meeting is kept secret to protect everyone's privacy. But this is too important an issue. The burning issue of our wine times. So I'm allowing my readers inside a meeting. Be prepared, it's a sad tale of addiction and woe. The kind that tears families apart, and ruins lives. Have a hankie nearby. You have time to grab one before you jump over to Tim Atkin's great blog to read the rest. It's a tale of addiction rampant in the wine business. It's time it was exposed.

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About Me

After 19 years as a Sommelier in Los Angeles, twice named Sommelier of the Year by the Southern California Restaurant Writers' Association, I moved to Sonoma County to explore the other aspects of the wine business. I've spent, OK wasted, 35 years learning about and teaching about and swallowing wine. I am also a judge at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition--so I can spit like a rabid llama. I know more about wine than David Sedaris and I'm funnier than James Laube. Stay tuned for an informed but jaded view of everything wine and everything else.

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"The HoseMaster is the funniest satirist writing about wine in the world today."

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"If you want a great hoot and howl moment or two...go read the HoseMaster's year-end reflections...that guy is without a doubt the funniest SOB in the blog-world...and thank him for having the brains and balls to target his laser of laughter on anybody...HoseMaster for President...HoseMaster for Blogger of the Year...although he would be the first to say the bar is so damn low for that award, he should win it every year..."--Robert Parker

"...With sometimes crude analogies and occasional droppings of f-bombs, Washam cleverly uses satire to expose the underbelly of the wine business. It's often hilarious stuff as long as you're not the one being lampooned.Washam takes no prisoners in skewering all that is silly, stupid, frustrating and pretentious about wine, and his favorite targets are other bloggers and writers. No one is immune."

--Linda Murphy in "Vineyard and Winery Management"

"No one is immune from California sommelier and wine judge Ron Washam's skewering. He polishes that skewer with boundless enthusiasm and acuity."--JancisRobinson.com

"How do you introduce Ron Washam, the Hosemaster of Wine? Two things:

First: I’m not sure if there is anyone better at cutting through the confidence trick that is often intrinsic to the business of wine.

Second: in a world where offending people appears to border on the illegal, the Hosemaster piles in. No one is safe."

--Joss Fowler "Vinolent.com"

"As serious as the world of wine is, it does allow time for humor. Each Monday and Thursday, Ron Washam customarily posts a commentary on his needling wine blog HoseMaster of Wine. Washam, a former sommelier and comedy writer – he might say they are closely related – is the most opinionated, humorous and ribald observer in the wine world. His body of work is irreverent and remorseless. It’s almost always satire and parody, though he occasionally drifts into straight commentary, sometimes even with tasting notes. This past year, one of his posts was named the best of the year in the Wine Blog Awards. His success has spawned several imitations, which in their awkwardness show just how difficult satire is."

"Please let this guy write the scripts for Saturday Night Live which has gotten so lame...his newest "wisdom" is worth an Emmy....I wonder if he is the genius behind all those Hitler/Parker,etc. clips? No one else is remotely as funny or as talented.And the wine world sure needs someone to poke fun at all the nonsense and phoney/baloney unsufferable crap out there."

--Robert Parker

"Washam uses his own blog, HoseMaster of Wine, to skewer the industry in general and wine blogs in particular. If your mouse scoots to your browser's close box while reading a wine blog, Washam may be the blogger for you."

--San Francisco Chronicle

"Ron Washam, former sommelier, is easily the most bitingly funny blogger/wine writer that we have ever come across. He is an equal opportunity crusader who pillories big wineries and amateur bloggers alike, as well as everything and everyone in between...One needs a sense of humor and a tolerance for earthiness to enjoy reading The Hosemaster. We must have both because this guy deserves a wider audience, in our humble opinion."--Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine

"In my opinion, and that of many others, his blog is one of the best. And in terms of satirical or parodic wine blogs, it has no peer. Ron’s alert eye catches every pretense and skewers it with laugh out loud mercilessness."

--Steve Heimoff

"This site should carry a warning label. It's sort of a Dave Barry/George Carlin approach to wine. The Hosemaster (real name Ron Washam) skewers fellow bloggers and industry savants with glee, while offering hilarious wine guides such as his Honest Guide to Grapes..."

--Paul Gregutt, Seattle Times

"Washam is a skilled wine judge (I have judged with him) who is willing to judge wine double blind, in public. To my knowledge, Parker does not do this and never has. So Ron's credentials are in place, and so is his sense of the absurd."

--Dan Berger, VintageExperiences

"...I consider Ron a very talented writer and I’ve long been an admirer of his scathing wit..."

--1WineDude

"And if any free sites think they can conquer the world, there’s always the Hosemaster to take ‘em down a notch."

--Tyler Colman "Dr. Vino"

"Those of you who know Ron either love or hate him, because he throws jabs like a punch drunk boxer, and we’re all in the firing line. He’ll throw them if he hates you, and he’ll throw them if he loves you. He’s a satirist of exceptional quality."

--Jo Diaz "Juicy Tales by Jo Diaz"

"I must say you are an idiot. I've never liked you. I have no idea why people find you funny."

--Reign of Terroir

"Robert (Joseph) was/is funny unlike HoseMaster who wasn't/isn't."

--Will Lyons (WSJ) on Twitter

"Hey Ron, let me ask you: is it true that you pick on girls and old critics because you don't think that they'll come back at you? Because if so, you lose: I'm on your ass now, asshole."